This Town's Full of Rattlesnakes
by miss.mithen
Summary: One of his best friends was ready to attack him with the championship belt to win a match. Another of his best friends just turned on him in his moment of triumph. So Sami Zayn, new holder of the NXT championship title, is having some bitter thoughts about friendship. Fortunately, the person waiting for him in the locker room is no friend.


_I take chances that most won't take_  
 _I get knocked down I won't break_  
 _Get it clear and make no mistake_  
 _This town's filled with rattlesnakes._  
 _-Rancid, "I Ain't Worried"_

The Full Sail Live Venue is nearly silent: the crowds are gone, the wrestlers too. Even the clean-up crews are almost done by the time the medical staff clears Sami and he gets back to gather his things together at last.

The championship belt is around his waist, glinting gold in the dim lights as he limps down the empty halls. He touches it, feeling smooth cool metal beneath his fingers. It's still real.

He looks up to realize that he's wandered astray, reflex taking him back to the top of the ramp where he can look down at the ring. The arena is silent, but in his mind he can still hear the gasps and the cheers. The way they chanted his name. The way they sang that Olé chant they seem to have decided is his (he has no idea why). The way they begged him not to use the belt currently around his waist to attack Adrian; not to taint it with his friend's blood. The way they roared when Adrian pulled him into that hug at the end.

Sami Zayn remembers Adrian's arms around him, and remembers how empty it left him. Because he had seen his friend with the belt in his hands, readying the blow.

He turns from the empty ring and corrects his course, heading back toward the locker room. His shoulder itches; his fingers come away with dried blood under the nails. He stares at it: Kevin's blood. Kevin, the first to the ring after the match, the first to embrace him, burying his head against Sami's shoulder, muttering broken congratulations. Sami had thought at that moment that there were tears of joy mixed with the blood. Maybe there even had been.

But only the blood remains now.

The adrenaline has drained away after hours spent with medical staff; he is exhausted, and his entire body aches. The halls are deserted. He wonders if Kevin is waiting around a corner, ready to finish the job. He is so tired he can hardly bring himself to care. _Kill me and get it over with if you must, Kevin, but you'll never get the belt from me. It's mine. I won it fair from one former friend, and I won't give it up to another. Not if the world itself turns against me._

As it turns out, someone _is_ waiting for him.

Half of the locker room lights are off, so at first the figure standing there is only a dim outline. Sami drops into a crouch, feeling the belt heavy and cold around his waist. "Yeah?" he snarls.

The figure hits the lights and Sami realizes it's a man in an expensive Italian suit, holding a cup of coffee: Cesaro.

For an instant Sami is relieved it's neither of his friends, and that's such a depressing thought that he no longer has any anger to spare for Cesaro. "Are you here to congratulate me?" he asks, his voice flat.

Cesaro puts down the coffee with exaggerated care and stalks toward Sami. "I'm here to tell you that you're a damn fool," he says. His accent seems thicker than usual with anger. "You turned your back on your opponent and it nearly cost you the match-more than once! And then you let down your guard with that Owens, and it nearly cost you more than that. You are smarter than that, Sami."

Sami smiles. Somehow this feels like familiar ground after everything else has been yanked out from under him tonight. "And yet here I am," he says, framing the belt with a flourish of his hands, "With the championship belt around my waist."

Cesaro moves too quickly for his weary muscles to respond, and Sami finds himself up against the lockers, Cesaro's hands on his shoulders. "You are a trusting fool," Cesaro snarls. "Again and again you extend your hand to people, and again and again they hurt you. You leave yourself vulnerable and they-" He lifts his leg as if to knee Sami in the balls, but stops short, his leg between Sami's legs, pressing him against the lockers. "-Go in for the kill."

The edges of the belt are digging into Sami's stomach. Cesaro's face is just inches away: his eyes blazing, his mouth a grim line. _Fight back,_ everything about his stance says. _Push me away. Why do you let me get so close?_

Sami shakes his head slowly, looking Cesaro in the eye. "It's what I am," he says. If he learned nothing else tonight, he learned this. "I can't change that." He laughs slightly, which isn't exactly easy with the belt jammed against his body, with Cesaro's knee heavy and insistent between his legs. "No-I _won't_ change that. It's what I am, and I'm still the NXT champion, motherfucker," he says, and he can't seem to stop smiling, because it's all true, and he'd do it all again: he'd trust Adrian, and he'd trust Kevin, and he'll just keep going. _And he is the NXT champion._ "So do whatever you came here to do, Cesaro, because I'm not impressed."

Cesaro's eyebrows are up: he looks surprised and delighted and quite predatory. His knee is still tucked between Sami's legs, and Sami is growing increasingly aware of this fact. Cesaro shifts forward slightly, pressing harder, and Sami can't help but gasp. He tries to make it sound like it's a gasp of pain.

It's not.

"Sami, Sami, Sami," Cesaro purrs. "After all our time together, you're still not impressed? I shall have to work harder."

And then he's tugging at Sami's tights and-"All right," says Sami, "Okay, I. Um. All right." Because his tights are pooled up around his ankles and Cesaro is on his knees in front of him, and _he has no idea what else to say._

Cesaro appears to be admiring his reflection in the gold of the belt around Sami's waist. "A pretty bauble," he says. "You can do better. You will do better, someday." He leans forward and breathes across it, then buffs his breath from it; at the sound of his exhalation Sami hears himself groan and his hips twitch despite himself.

"Patience," Cesaro chides. His hands go to Sami's hips, digging into sore muscles, just painful enough to be- "You are the most exasperating, infuriating man I have ever faced, Sami Zayn. So smug, so sure of yourself." He looks up at Sami. "You and I will never be friends. Are you sure you don't want me to walk out of this locker room right now and leave you alone with your little victory?"

Sami glares down at him. "I've had about enough of _friends_ for tonight, Cesaro. I think I can handle you."

Cesaro chuckles, and the sound somehow banishes the last of Sami's exhaustion entirely. "Shall we find out?" he says, and leans forward with lazy, contemptuous grace to take Sami's cock in his mouth.

Sami vaguely feels the back of his head collide with the metal lockers: once, then twice. He feels completely untethered from reality at this point; of all the ways he had imagined confronting Cesaro once more, this had never made the list. (Though some things like it have. Now and then. Very late at night when he couldn't sleep). His hands scrabble against the lockers, then somehow come to rest on the championship belt, which feels like the only real and solid thing in an increasingly disjointed and wavering world. Cesaro does something agile and obscene with his tongue, and Sami mutters something in Arabic that would have his mother washing his mouth out with soap.

Cesaro leans back on his haunches and grins up at him. "It is one of my many skills, yes," he says.

"I thought you couldn't speak Arabic," Sami manages through a hazy combination of embarrassment and lust. It is taking some effort of will not to grab Cesaro's head and-

Cesaro shrugs. "I decided it might be interesting to learn some. I've been studying for seven months now, I've made some progress."

Their match was seven months ago. Sami feels his expression change, sees something go across Cesaro's face for a second; gone before he can quite process it.

"What can I say?" The smirk is back on Cesaro's face. "I like a challenge." He leans forward again and Sami's world returns to its unraveling.

As his climax seizes him, he realizes vaguely that his hands and Cesaro's are entwined and clutching at the belt together, as if the strap of metal and leather can keep them both grounded somehow. For an instant, that-the belt, and their hands, and the pleasure-are the only things in the world.

He comes slowly back to himself and finds that he's shaking, panting, he can hardly stand. Pain and pleasure, triumph and betrayal, it's all caught up to him. Cesaro's hands at his waist seem to be the only thing holding him up. Cesaro is murmuring against his thigh, his breath caressing Sami's skin, the language shifting with each sentence. They should probably be insults-when have they given each other anything else?-but although German isn't one of Sami's languages he knows enough to suspect that _mein lieber Rivale_ is nothing of the sort.

For a moment, Sami Zayn closes his eyes and rests in an enemy's embrace as he has not been able to in a friend's.

By the time Cesaro stands up, pulling Sami's tights up again with him, Sami has his expression back under control. Cesaro smiles, cocky and pleased with himself. If he sees the tracks of tears on Sami's face, he doesn't acknowledge them, and for that Sami is profoundly grateful. "When I win the heavyweight championship, I expect you to return the favor," he throws back over his shoulder as he goes to the door.

"Sure," says Sami. "And then I'll start brushing up on my Italian, so I can properly accept your congratulations when I take the belt away from you."

Cesaro turns and beams at him, arrogant and challenging and delighted. He double-punches the air, _bang-bang_ , and the door swings shut behind him.

Sami Zayn unbuckles the belt and sits down hard on the locker room bench. He aches all over. Tomorrow he will be a mass of bruises and cuts, and tomorrow the real work begins. He's going to have to deal with Kevin, and with all the people who think he's too weak to hold this belt. Too _nice_ to hold this belt.

He looks down at his reflection in the metal, bright and golden. He's smiling. He is what he is.

Then he realizes that Cesaro has let him have the last word, and of all the triumphs of the night both great and small, that just might be the most unexpected.


End file.
